It's been a long time

It has been, indeed!!! Almost nine months. A lot has happened. So much that I can't even recall. A new year has begun. And there are new resolutions. Like every year. Will try to keep up with my thoughts as fast as they come. And as fast as they go! :-P. Below are some of them...

• Will complete my second play by the end of the year,
• Will write at least six posts/reviews every month,
  
• Will read more books(have already started reading The Ascent of Money BTW),
  
• Will (try to) control my temper,
• Will travel to either of Ladakh, Goa or Kerela this year,
  
• and lastly, will open a PPF account(it's been six years....WTF!)

Life is not a movie

...But its close to a movie.

Similar situations, no background score.

Fights, no dhishum dhishum.

Characterless people, no characters.

Me : A sucker for taglines!

I am a sucker for taglines. Taglines. One liners. Punch lines. Whatever you might want to call them. And I have always been. Since I was a teen (I am a senior citizen now, IMHO) I was amazed by one liners and their inherent awesomeness. My first tryst with the greatest one liner was an ad for Bajaj Eliminator. It went like this.

A page on the right hand side of India Today magazine displayed a diamond and said

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

Turn over the page and you would see the following specs listed under each other

150 CC
12 Bhp
0 – 60 kmph in 5 secs

Turn over another page again and it said

The new Bajaj Eliminator. WHY WOULD A MAN NEED JEWELERY?

I was never into bikes then but at that moment, I thought there was nothing better on this planet that could be said more stylishly. I came across more and more. There was an IBM Thinkpad one which went like this

For those who have arrived, but still like to travel. Awesome, Isn’t it?

Then 2 things happened which deeply affected my association with taglines. I started following Hollywood closely and I got introduced to Chandler Bing. Yes Chandler Bing of Friends fame. The relationship-phobic sarcastic guy who hates his job and in his own words ‘uses humour as a defence mechanism’. Chandler was brilliant with his one liners, a fact that made the character most popular after Joey and Rachel. He was sarcastic, witty and funny at the same(kinda like me). Sample some

1. (When Rachel asks him for advice)I'm not really good at giving advices. Do you want a sarcastic comment?
2. All right, look if you absolutely have to tell her the truth, at least wait until the timing's right. And that's what deathbeds are for.
3. (On being asked if Joey looks nineteen)Yes, on a scale from one to ten, ten being the dumbest a person can look, you are definitely nineteen.
4. Someone to Chandler: Wow, you have really gorgeous hair.
Chandler: Thanks, I grow it myself.

Some of them are pretty normal but it’s the way Chandler says it makes them better than they are.

Hollywood is more about style AND content and sometimes more style and less content. More often than not, every Hollywood film comes with a tagline. One of the initial ones I stumbled upon was for Money Train

Get on or get out of the way!

But some of the most favorite ones have been

• Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.(Shawshank Redemption) What a line!
• Leave no man behind.(This one is all about teamwork from Black hawk down – very powerful, hits you once you watch this one)
• When the country was on its feet, he brought America to its feet(Individual glory - Cinderella Man)
• A hero will be revealed. (What if you have to choose between love and duty - Spiderman 2 – Only if you are a spidey fan)
• It ain’t over till it’s over (Rocky Balboa)

And finally to some of my own

• One day my dad remarked while having lunch – Aaj sabjee main lehsun zyada ho gaya. My mom said yes I will let the cook know. To which I remarked – Hope she learns the lehson(lesson).
• A friend of mine said – Man you are a racist. I replied – No I am not a racist. I don’t discriminate. I hate everybody equally.
• This one too went to my facebook status - I will smoke, I might drink, I will do drugs, I will rape, I will molest, I will throw wrappers on the streets, I will abuse, I will overtake from the left...but I won’t have non-veg cause Navratra chal rahe hain....!
• It seems the IPL is fixed. KKR is doing well.
• One line Michael Jackson would have trouble saying - I am not kidding!!!

Kung fu Panda Redux

Glossing over the events which have happened over the last 20 days, I am reminded of that beautiful line from Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda.

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."

The story of my life

I understand that there's some problems
And I'm not too blind to know
All the pain you kept inside you
Even though you might not show
If I can't apologize for being wrong
Then it's just a shame on me
I'd be the reason for your pain
And you can put the blame on me

By Akon

I am back

Tired, lazy and groggy as one can be from a Goa trip which got extended because of reasons beyond control. Will get back to regular blogging soon.

P.S. - Meanwhile on the way to Goa and back I have discovered one of the greatest music albums ever made by a Bollywood composer. Yes!!! Dev D is the best (original)music to come out of Bollywood in a decade. Check it out, if you still haven't.

Back with a BANG!

It's been a long long time actually. First, I had my final semester exams, then dissertation susmission, a marriage and then a crisis on the personal front, all of which are either over or have been resolved. A lot has happened since my last long post, attacks on Bombay being the major happening. Amongst all the crap that has been floating in the media(print as well as TV), I saw some very very few articles/columns being able to see reason and talk sense. Some of them are as follows.

1. GreatBong's posts on 26/11 and the press coverage
2. Offstumped and the Acorn are as usual, at their best.
3. M J Akbar's(for whom I have newfound respect now) piece, here and here.
4. Swapan Dasgupta, as usual everywhere.

Amongst the English channels CNN IBN is the worst. Their coverage as well as their anchors as well as their bias against you know who. NDTV was better but then they have Barkha Dutt no. Whenever NDTV tries to do well, she tries equally hard to show how minorities have also suffered.

Madam Barkha, we Indians are not fools. After the Gujarat riots, there have been almost 8-12 terrorist attacks on India and nowhere have Hindu mobs targetted muslims. So puh-lease stop treating us as kids and behaving as the epitome of (pseudo)secularism.We are more mature than you think.

Amongst the good things that happened was India's win against England and Sachin's knock. And now Dravid's knock too. But the best bit of cricketing news came from down under. So you see arrogance is fallible!!! LOL! On the subject of cricket, Harsha's latest is as usual, ORGASMIC!

Wow!!!

2 months and 1 post.....have to get back to regular blogging. Have a lot on my mind - terror attacks, India's win, Sachin's century blah blah blah.

Mid-Terms are over

And I am back to blogging. So what's new? Jammu is still burning, Kashmir(is) are still lying, The Dark Knight is still rocking, Shivraj Patil is still sucking, BJP is still hamming, Katrina is still denying and so on and so forth. Life hasn't changed much except that Harsha Bhogle is still mindblowing.

The things to do List

That I like the Travel and Living channel(TLC) is no big secret, what is not known about me is that I have a huge fascination for adventure. I might not have the stamina or a previous skydiving/mountain biking/bungee jumping record or the money(LOL! for now that is) but I have always had a huge inclination to go for a (mo)bike ride across Ladakh or take the Jism(Ahem the film!) route from Chennai to Pondicherry and the biggest of them all - the Trans-Siberian Railway. I dont know when did I read about it, I guess it was in some travel magazine - maybe Outlook Traveller. But its hung up on me. The very thought. 7 days of a train journey acoss Russia, the landscape, the experience, the people, the culture shock. The kind of stuff you tell your grandchildren about. Right?!!

But yesterday I saw something even more exciting on the TLC channel. The name of the show is Long Way Round. Its a documentary of a 31,000 km journey of Evan Mcgregor(acted in Moulin Rouge and Black Hawk Down) and his friend Charley Boorman from London to New York on BMW bikes in 2004. In between they pass through Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, SIberia and then via Alaska, Canada to New York. I saw one episode yesterday and it was actually mindblowing, something which could better the Trans-Siberian Railway. What do you think?!!

Bol na halke halke

Listened to this song from Jhoom Barabar Jhoom almost seventeen times tonight. Pata nahi kya baat hai is gaane main. I get addicted to it especially when I am all alone.

P.S. : I know the singer is a paki but the music directors are Indian!

A much simpler time